Women have entered the labour force in large numbers, a fact which has strongly affected the personal lives of people of both sexes.

At first, I would like to put a number into the two sentence like below.
1) Women have entered the labour force in large numbers
2) a fact which has strongly affected the personal lives of people of both sexes.

It doesn't have a connection word like 'although', 'because', 'and', 'but' etc. I wonder How I can understand the relation between 1) and 2).

Please give me the answer.

08-May-2010, 12:35

Kazuo

Re: a sentence without a connection?

Hello, atssarbia

******* Not A Teacher *******

The sentence below might help you understand your problem.

Every year the Christmas shopping season seems to start earlier, a fact which many people find hard to stomach. (from Longman Language Activator)

1) Every year the Christmas shopping season seems to start earlier,
2) a fact which many people find hard to stomach.

1) explains 2). That is: 1) is a fact which ……. The same idea can be applied to your case. This must be the relation (= connection), I think.

Kazuo

08-May-2010, 13:59

TheParser

Re: a sentence without a connection?

Quote:

Originally Posted by atssarbia

The example sentence:

Women have entered the labour force in large numbers, a fact which has strongly affected the personal lives of people of both sexes.

At first, I would like to put a number into the two sentence like below.
1) Women have entered the labour force in large numbers
2) a fact which has strongly affected the personal lives of people of both sexes.

It doesn't have a connection word like 'although', 'because', 'and', 'but' etc. I wonder How I can understand the relation between 1) and 2).

Please give me the answer.

***** NOT A TEACHER *****

Good morning, atssarbia.

(1) You are correct: there is no conjunction.

(2) A fact which has ....both sexes = those words are in apposition with the whole sentence ("Women... in large numbers").

(3) Most native speakers would probably leave out "a fact":

Women have entered the labor force in large numbers, which has affected the lives of both sexes. ("which" = which fact)

(a) "which" is interpreted as a relative pronoun that refers to the whole main sentence ("Women ...large numbers").

(b) This is a nice way of writing one sentence instead of two:

Women have entered the labor force in large numbers. This (fact) has affected the lives of both sexes.